Affirmation

To grow old is to lose everything.Aging, everybody knows it.Even when we are young,we glimpse it sometimes, and nod our headswhen a grandfather dies.Then we row for years on the midsummerpond, ignorant and content. But a marriage,that began without harm, scattersinto debris on the shore,and a friend from shcool dropscold on a rocky strand.If a new love carries uspast middle age, our wife will dieat her strongest and most beautiful.New women come and go. All go.The pretty lover who announcesthat she is temporaryis temporary. The bold woman,middle-aged against our old age,sinks under an anxiety she cannot withstand.Another friend of decades estranges himselfin words that pollute thirty years.Let us stifle under mud at the pond’s edgeand affirm that it is fittingand delicious to lose everything.